Losing Control: The Uncertain Management of Concealable Stigmas When Work and Social Media Collide

Lucas Amaral Lauriano () and Thiago Coacci
Additional contact information
Lucas Amaral Lauriano: LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Scholars typically portray employees' management of concealable stigmas in face-to-face encounters in which social groups are easily separable (e.g., friends, family, and co-workers). This analytical predisposition overlooks the possible roles of social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Instagram. These online platforms enable a cohabitation of different audiences, that is, a context collapse that allows a growing, invisible audience to easily access information about one's stigma. In our qualitative analysis in a Latin American organization, we develop a model that documents the everyday dynamics of context collapse amongst gay male employees. In a disclosure dilemma, employees are uncertain about how to be a professional online and simultaneously keep SNSs as platforms where they can show more relaxed versions of themselves. As a response, most employees adopt mirroring, and attempt to reflect their face-to-face disclosure levels on SNSs. Some employees engage in destigmatization efforts online, and as an outlier case we mapped an employee in collapse denial. Our study questions the established idea of disclosure as a relatively controlled process in micro-interactions. We also nuance the assumption of SNSs as safe spaces and show the unintended impacts of context collapse on the stigmatized.

Date: 2021-11-24
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Academy of Management Journal, 2021, ⟨10.5465/amj.2020.0586⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03597383

DOI: 10.5465/amj.2020.0586

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().